Alarm systems employed to monitor domestic and business properties are used to detect unauthorized intrusion, fire, smoke or the presence of dangerous materials or gasses. Traditionally, an alarm system comprises a control or alarm panel with one or more display devices such as an LCD keypad, sensors such as motion detectors, heat detectors, etc., and actuators such as bells, sounders, flashing lights, etc., all of which are associated with the control panel and mounted throughout the protected premises. Alarm panels receive status information of the sensors and actuators present on the alarm system. In response to changes in status, the panel will activate appropriate actuators and will transmit alarm system status and changes in status externally to alarm reporting stations. The transmission of alarm status information may be done in a variety of ways, such as via telephone technology, e.g., plain old telephone systems (POTS), global system for mobile communications (GSM), and general packet radio service (GPRS), or via Ethernet with WIFI link or radio frequency (RF), among others.
When an alarm system is armed, it is placed in a mode that will allow it to detect and report alarm related events, such as an intrusion in an intruder alarm system, fire and/or smoke in a fire alarm system, etc. The sensor(s) detecting the alarm event reports it to the control panel. The control panel then responds by activating alarm indication actuators, e.g. it may enable a bell, flashing lights, etc., and will report the alarm status to an alarm monitoring station. When installing alarm systems, each individual sensor and actuator must be tested to ensure not only that it is functioning correctly and to the appropriate alarm standards, but also that it is correctly wired to the control panel. This testing or fault finding of the individual sensors is generally done in a “walk test”.
Walk testing alarm systems normally requires two engineers, one to trigger alarms and observe indications by walking through the building stimulating the various sensors, the other to monitor, for each resulting alarm condition, the alarm panel's display device that corresponds to the stimulated sensors. Every time an alarm response is triggered, it is documented and the alarm system is then placed in an appropriate state for walk testing the next area to be tested.
Walk testing can be done by one engineer but it is time consuming, especially for large installations. The walk test requires the lone engineer to trigger alarms by walking through the protected area, stimulating or triggering sensors. This engineer must then return to the control panel periodically to interrogate the alarm system log and place the alarm panel in an appropriate state before continuing with the next part of the walk test.
Among the problems of the aforementioned approach is the need for a physical presence of an installer at the control panel during the walk test. Hence, either two installers are required for the walk test, or one installer must travel back and forth between the sensors throughout the protected area and the control panel, necessitating the use of significant resources to complete and validate installation of the security system.